SIS acquires rights to SIMION development; ASMS meeting

To SIMION Users,

I have some long awaited news on SIMION. As you may know, there has
not been a major new release of SIMION in some years following the
retirement of lead SIMION developer David Dahl at what is now Idaho
National Labs (INL). Still, SIMION remains widely used and its user
base continues to grow at a steady rate. Obviously, as in any piece
of software, customers desire changes and improvements. As a
distributor of SIMION for INL, our company Scientific Instrument
Services, Inc. (SIS) has heard feedback from many users, comments of
where SIMION gets things right (the simplicity/directness,
interactiveness to aid intuition, affordability, and it's a
ability/flexibility to solve a wide variety of real problems) and
where it falls short (e.g. the user interface and programming
interface are due for an overhaul and some nagging quirks like the
file directory limit need fixed). It's obvious that SIMION needs an
active maintainer. SIS has pursued this issue for some time, and in
the meantime we had started up simion.com and developed the toolkit
accessory package. The good news is that the SIS has completed the
required contract, and its rights to maintain the SIMION source code
become effective July 1, 2005. My main job over the year (and
possibly much longer) will be to manage this project and bring about
SIMION 8.0 (and likely 7.x or development/beta releases along the way,
which will require testers).

In the meantime, some planning is being done, and we appreciate all
feedback as to what you would like to see improved in SIMION, whether
in general or on very specific points. After all, you are the users
of the software, and it is your requirements that must be met.
(Vacuum conditions may be desirable for ion optics, but for software
development it is not.) You may post comments on the discussion board
or call/e-mail me. I will also be at the ASMS meeting in San Antonio
Texas next week, and we can discuss anything there as well. SIS will
be at booth #61, and I will plan to stop by at some of your posters.
Also, as in last year, you may stop by and ask some question on using
SIMION (I will bring a laptop with SIMION and even CPO and other such
software).

Over the coming month, new tools will be added to the SIMION web site
to better support the development process. For example, this SIMION
discussion group will be moved to simion.com to better manage multiple
levels of discussion (e.g. Announcements, User Support, and
Development). The new forum is at

http://www.simion.com/discuss

(Some changes may be made here in the next few days as things are finalized, but you are welcome to try it out.) Further details will follow.

For those attending ASMS, below is the list of all posters that are related to SIMION (or at least have SIMION mentioned in the abstract).

News Flash

INL and SIS Agree to Develop SIMION Ion Optics Software

The U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory and
Scientific Instrument Services Inc. (SIS) of Ringoes, NJ have joined
in a new license agreement to develop and maintain the software code
for the SIMION suite of ion optics modeling software. The agreement
will allow SIS to enhance, update and maintain the software, to
satisfy the needs of the user community, benefit the industrial
partner and the government.

SIMION 3D, originally developed by INL employee David Dahl, is an
award-winning Windows PC based program, widely used by manufacturers
and designers of mass spectrometers, electron microscopes, electron
multipliers and other scientific instruments to study the optics of
charged particles through electric and magnetic fields in two and
three dimensions. SIMION is designed to provide direct and highly
interactive methods, balancing ease-of-use, speed, accuracy, and
affordability in order to simulate a variety of real-world ion optics
problems. SIMION can model complex problems using a workbench
strategy that can hold up to 200 2-D and/or 3-D electrostatic or
magnetic field arrays, each of up to 50,000,000 points, which the user
can visualize in 3D and cut away to inspect ion trajectories and
potential energy surfaces to gain intuition and collect quantitative
data.

SIMION is so pervasive, and so influential that in 1998, the American
Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) recognized that "the application
of SIMION has been invaluable to the design of mass spectrometers (the
kinds of machines that SIMION simulates) for the last decade."

SIS has distributed SIMION since 1996 and has more recently developed
accessory tools to expand the capabilities of SIMION to include the
importation of CAD files directly into SIMION, a new compiler and
other tools requested by customers. Similar features along with an
updated user interface are planned for inclusion in the next major
release of SIMION. SIS has also established a SIMION web site
(www.simion.com) to provide customers with information and support on
SIMION. SIS warmly welcomes any comments or suggestions from the
SIMION community on the future direction of the SIMION software.

Established in 1978, Scientific Instrument Services specializes in
supplies and services for mass spectrometers and related scientific
and medical equipment. The company distributes its products via a
catalog and through its web site (www.sisweb.com). SIS also designs
and manufactures filaments, probes and other instrument accessories
for OEM's in the scientific and medical market. With more than 30
employees, SIS's staff includes sales, technicians, machinists,
engineers, programmers and product development/support specialists.

The INL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory
dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's missions in
environment, energy, science and national security. The INL is
operated for the DOE by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC.